There is a continuous and expanding need for rapid, highly specific methods of detecting and quantifying chemical, biochemical and biological substances as analytes in research and diagnostic mixtures. Of particular value are methods for measuring small quantities of nucleic acids, peptides, pharmaceuticals, metabolites, microorganisms and other materials of diagnostic value. Examples of such materials include small molecular bioactive materials (e.g., narcotics and poisons, drugs administered for therapeutic purposes, hormones), pathogenic microorganisms and viruses, antibodies, and enzymes and nucleic acids, particularly those implicated in disease states.
The presence of a particular analyte can often be determined by binding methods that exploit the high degree of specificity, which characterizes many biochemical and biological systems. Frequently used methods are based on, for example, antigen-antibody systems, nucleic acid hybridization techniques, and protein-ligand systems. In these methods, the existence of a complex of diagnostic value is typically indicated by the presence or absence of an observable “label” which has been attached to one or more of the interacting materials. The specific labeling method chosen often dictates the usefulness and versatility of a particular system for detecting an analyte of interest. Preferred labels are inexpensive, safe, and capable of being attached efficiently to a wide variety of chemical, biochemical, and biological materials without significantly altering the important binding characteristics of those materials. The label should give a highly characteristic signal, and should be rarely, and preferably never, found in nature. The label should be stable and detectable in aqueous systems over periods of time ranging up to months. Detection of the label is preferably rapid, sensitive, and reproducible without the need for expensive, specialized facilities or the need for special precautions to protect personnel. Quantification of the label is preferably relatively independent of variables such as temperature and the composition of the mixture to be assayed.
A wide variety of labels have been developed, each with particular advantages and disadvantages. For example, radioactive labels are quite versatile, and can be detected at very low concentrations, such labels are, however, expensive, hazardous, and their use requires sophisticated equipment and trained personnel. Thus, there is wide interest in non-radioactive labels, particularly in labels that are observable by spectrophotometric, spin resonance, and luminescence techniques, and reactive materials, such as enzymes that produce such molecules.
Labels that are detectable using fluorescence spectroscopy are of particular interest, because of the large number of such labels that are known in the art. Moreover, the literature is replete with syntheses of fluorescent labels that are derivatized to allow their facile attachment to other molecules, and many such fluorescent labels are commercially available.
In addition to being directly detected, many fluorescent labels operate to quench the fluorescence of an adjacent second fluorescent label. Because of its dependence on the distance and the magnitude of the interaction between the quencher and the fluorophore, the quenching of a fluorescent species provides a sensitive probe of molecular conformation and binding, or other, interactions. An excellent example of the use of fluorescent reporter quencher pairs is found in the detection and analysis of nucleic acids.
An alternative detection scheme, which is theoretically more sensitive than autoradiography, is time-resolved fluorimetry. According to this method, a chelated lanthanide metal with a long radiative lifetime is attached to a molecule of interest. Pulsed excitation combined with a gated detection system allows for effective discrimination against short-lived background emission. For example, using this approach, the detection and quantification of DNA hybrids via an europium-labeled antibody has been demonstrated (Syvanen et al., Nucleic Acids Research 14: 1017-1028 (1986)). In addition, biotinylated DNA was measured in microtiter wells using Eu-labeled strepavidin (Dahlen, Anal. Biochem. 164: 78-83 (1982)). A disadvantage, however, of these types of assays is that the label must be washed from the probe and its fluorescence developed in an enhancement solution. A further drawback has been the fact that the fluorescence produced has only been in the nanosecond (ns) range, a generally unacceptably short period for adequate detection of the labeled molecules and for discrimination from background fluorescence.
In view of the predictable practical advantages it has been generally desired that the lanthanide chelates employed should exhibit a delayed fluorescence with decay times of more than 10 μs. The fluorescence of many of the known fluorescent chelates tends to be inhibited by water. As water is generally present in an assay, particularly an immunoassay system, lanthanide complexes that undergo inhibition of fluorescence in the presence of water are viewed as somewhat unfavorable or impractical for many applications. Moreover, the short fluorescence decay times is considered a disadvantage of these compounds. This inhibition is due to the affinity of the lanthanide ions for coordinating water molecules. When the lanthanide ion has coordinated water molecules, the absorbed light energy (excitation energy) is transferred from the complex to the solvent rather than being emitted as fluorescence.
Thus, lanthanide chelates, particularly coordinatively saturated chelates having excellent fluorescence properties are highly desirable. In the alternative, coordinatively unsaturated lanthanide chelates that exhibit acceptable fluorescence in the presence of water are also advantageous. Such chelates that are derivatized to allow their conjugation to one or more components of an assay, find use in a range of different assay formats. The present invention provides these and other such compounds and assays using these compounds.